Short Reviews -Shadowrun Missions Season 4 (part 1)

6 July, 2012

Shadowrun Missions are part of Catalyst Labs’ Shadowrun Missions campaign which can be run as part of this ongoing evolving campaign or used as standalone adventures. The theme of Season 4 is conflict over magical artifacts by various interested parties and the politicizing of the Ork Underground and it primarily takes place in Seattle.

Looking at three of the first four scenarios:Shadowrun Missions: Back in Business (04-00) is the gateway scenario for Season 4 in so many ways, containing shout outs to 1st edition Shadowrun and ties to both of the major plot elements of Season 4. It has a lot of action and opportunities for the characters to makes ties that will serves them well later in the campaign, while essentially a rescue scenario, it has some good scenes for roleplaying and investigation as well. It has the potential to work as an excellent introduction to Season 4 of the Shadowrun mission and should be fun even if it does not manage that perfectly.

Shadowrun Missions: Extraction (04-02) starts with exactly that, an extraction which -as it must be done in a rush- has all sorts of ways to go wrong and things just get worse from there as no less than five extremely dangerous organizations want the extractee or parts of him. This adventure is part of the artefact side of Season 4 but does not feature magic as a heavy plot element in play. This module requires a lot of quick thinking on behalf of the players and an adaptive GM as very little is set in stone and much depends on player action. Personally, due to the potential for things to go wrong very quickly in this scenario, I would classify this as module for experience players with experience characters.

Shadowrun Missions: Rally Cry (04-03) is more of the politics of the Ork Underground as the characters are hired to kidnap a politician and make him look bad by inserting him into a radical political rally. The characters have to grab him and then plant him to make this all work. Challenging but possible and they can end up with some favors owned from both sides of the political fence if they play their cards right.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copies of these products for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.